Queen Anne in Colonial New England

Queen Anne (1665-1714) was Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1702 until the Act of Union in 1707, when she became monarch of Great Britain and Ireland, a position she would hold until her death in 1714. Raised a Protestant, Anne had a distant relationship with her Catholic father, James II, and she acquiesced in the Glorious Revolution that brought her sister and brother-in-law (William and Mary, who ruled from 1688-1702) to power. She was the last Stuart ruler and presided over a period of transition to parliamentary government. She was also the last English monarch to exercise the royal veto.

Anne's reign was consumed by the War of the Spanish Succession, a European conflict that spread across the Atlantic and was known in America as Queen Anne's War. It lasted from 1702-13 and involved a series of violent clashes, including the destruction of Deerfield, Massachusetts by French forces and their Indian allies in 1704. During the war, the British failed to conquer French Quebec, but did capture Port Royal and Acadia (present-day Nova Scotia as well as parts of New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and coastal areas of eastern Maine) in 1710. The Peace of Utrecht that ended the war gave the British control over Newfoundland and the fur-trading posts around Hudson Bay, but these territorial gains in Canada hardly or conclusively resolved the imperial battle for control over North America. The French and British would continue to fight over North American imperial interests throughout the eighteenth century.